Grudge match: Texas House District 36 candidates fighting over every vote

PALMVIEW — A government parking lot became the verbal equivalent of a schoolyard shoving match Friday between two candidates for Texas House District 36.

Cloaked in righteous fury, challenger Sandra Rodriguez plunged into a knot of incumbent Kino Flores’ supporters to get to the man himself.

Comfortable with the home field advantage, Flores had a small smile on his face, arms crossed over his chest. He leaned back against a black school bus painted with his campaign insignia.

Rodriguez berated the state representative over a perceived slight against her campaign workers — Flores, she said, had waved a wad of money at the opposition’s tent, signaling that his campaign was better funded. He denied it ever happened.

Moments later, two Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputies intervened.

“Can everybody just go to their sides?” one said, waving to the other side of the Hidalgo County Precinct 3 lot where Rodriguez’s supporters had set up camp.

“There are no sides,” Rodriguez snapped.

“Right, but I need to separate everybody. That’s what I need to do,” the deputy replied, arms outstretched.

Resentfully, the crowd dispersed and their voices slowly quieted.

District 36 meanders along Expressway 83 through parts of Pharr and McAllen and out to Palmview. But the atmosphere of this year’s primary contest — defined by the starkly contrasting temperaments of the Democrats running for the seat — has tended more toward the scrappiness of western Hidalgo County politics than to the relatively more genteel politicking typical of McAllen.

Door to door

It is Tuesday morning, and Rodriguez is trying hard to win over a potential constituent.

Bending at the knee, she chirps and clucks at a tiny white dog whose high-pitched yips drown out Rodriguez’s earnest pitch to his owner.

“I am Sandra Rodriguez. I want to introduce myself and my campaign. I am running to represent you in the state of Texas,” she shouts in Spanish to the older woman.

Eventually, driven away by the insistent and incongruously named Growly, Rodriguez turns on her boot’s high heel and heads back down the driveway. You can’t win them all.

She has spent the past few weeks walking streets, making calls and trying to win voters one by one.

“This reminds me of my days as a probation officer,” she says, hanging a campaign advertisement on the door knob at an empty home down the street. “That’s when I learned not to be afraid of dogs.”

She’s striding down Ebony Street in McAllen in a midday drizzle that fogs her heavy black glasses. Flanked by her sister and a clipboard-carrying aide, she is fighting to boost her name recognition to better compete against the ubiquitous Flores.

The people she approaches are at first taken aback by the woman on their doorsteps, but many warm to her, asking her about the presidential race and plans for a veterans hospital in the Rio Grande Valley.

Back at her small, pleasant office in Pharr, David Leo will transfer information from his clipboard to a laptop using a supermarket-style laser scanner. Dedicated Rodriguez supporters or those leaning toward voting for her will receive phone calls, offers of a ride to the polls, reminders.

Leo, a nephew of La Joya Mayor Billy Leo, who is backing Rodriguez, is with the campaign as one of two workers sent to Rodriguez from Annie’s List, an Austin-based political action group that backs liberal women for state-level office. Annie’s List’s technology and experience are aimed at making Rodriguez’s campaign lean and efficient, a juggernaut on a featherweight budget.

In their model, the candidate has to do most of the sales pitching face-to-face instead of leaving campaigning to surrogates.

Rodriguez’s passion and the vehement way she expresses her positions can put people off — but they win others over.

“We’re going to give her our vote,” Bernardo Rios said in Spanish, after discussing presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton with the candidate for a few minutes in his McAllen living room. “What she says is sincere.”

On the bus

On Friday morning, Flores’ black bus pulls up in front of Circle of Friends Adult Day Care Center just off 5 Mile Line.

The vehicle discharges five older men and women, clients at the center, as well as the business’ director. They have all been to vote early and are ready for lunch.

Lounging behind the wheel, Flores is a cheerful driver. Loudspeakers on the roof blare radio spots, testimonials and Tejano music from a portable CD player in the cab.

“We have a real good time with it — it’s not your usual,” he says.

Flores’ laid-back geniality conceals an intensity of his own. The cell phone holstered at his belt connects him to a network of supporters and employees who fan out from a small Palmview strip-mall office, picking up voters, distributing literature and calling in favors. The main organizers report in like generals from the field of battle.

Flores remembers every adult daycare center and tire shop where he ever shook a hand, and he works tirelessly to ensure that those handshakes will become votes.

He pulls aside one supporter to discuss the other man’s legal issues and slaps the sheriff’s deputies on the back until they break into friendly grins.

These — Flores’ omnipresence, his amiable maneuvering in the deadly serious world of politics — are the traits his detractors criticize most.

His network includes members of several local governments — people he boosted into office — and some critics decry his close involvement in last year’s illegitimate La Joya school board election.

A judge overturned the results of that contest in October, saying poll workers had counted illegal votes.

In Austin, Flores is a slippery entity, a detail-oriented deal-maker who makes handshake alliances on both sides of the aisle. During debates, otherwise accurate punches are deftly deflected by his silver tongue.

In a debate in front of the University of Texas Pan-American Young Democrats on Wednesday, incumbent and challenger posed uneasily for pictures.

Following a mostly civil debate, they made nice while shaking hands with students.

But once the photos were done, the two sprang away from each other.

Rodriguez began to pass out her “Kino No!” pamphlets.

Flores, his son at his side, returned to shaking hands and slapping backs.

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Sara Perkins covers Mission, western Hidalgo County, Starr County and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4472.